


Music -- Etherial, Material

by lferion



Category: Spirit - George Roux (Painting 1885)
Genre: Drabble, Drabble Decade, Drabble Sequence, F/M, Ghosts, Gothic Metaphysics, Inspired by Art, Music, Musicians, Yuletide, Yuletide 2020, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:56:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28295667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lferion/pseuds/lferion
Summary: Etherial music made material
Comments: 12
Kudos: 9
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Music -- Etherial, Material

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Deepdarkwaters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deepdarkwaters/gifts).



> Many thanks to M for encouragement, brainstorming, and sanity-checking.

* * *

He had heard the house was haunted before he bought it -- thus the reasonable price for such an elegant house in a desirable location -- and again before he took possession, as he arranged for painters -- daylight only, mind you! Ghostly, eerie, not quite recognizable music, they said. Lights flickering about. Footsteps and tapping fingers, light and quick and sudden. 

Well, he could do with more music in his life, and what was one more ghost among those he already had? Perhaps they could keep each other company and let him sleep. He signed the papers with a will, furniture included.

* * *

"It's the gas" opined a friend, but a thorough inspection discovered the gaslights to have been replaced with the new electric lighting, He moved his books, his papers, his wardrobe and himself in without fuss, and did indeed sleep well for some time, his own ghosts soothed by well-fitted windows and the quiet rooms. 

Then one night he read late, and came gradually aware of a hush of distant music. A glimmer of light came from the music room. He made his quiet way across the hall, there she was, pale as the ivory keys that sounded under her fingers.

* * *

He stood in the doorway, listening, watching. They keys did not actually move under her fingers, yet the music sounded as if they did, not loud, but perfectly clear. It was almost but not quite a piece he knew, and while she was not at all hesitant in her playing, she would occasionally repeat phrases and bars with slight variations, until she was apparently happy with them, and then go back and play the section through again. It dawned on him that she was composing, not rehearsing, and that while he didn't know the piece, he did know the style....

* * *

(He recalled a scandal, some years previous -- a noted composer-conductor, who'd let the heady wine of society approval go to his head. There'd been mistresses, a betrayed wife, broken promises, not to mention interrupted performances and extremely unhappy artistes, concert hall managers and influential donors. The wife -- an artist in her own right, but not apparently of the husband's calibre -- had vanished, dead, of no clear cause. Of course the husband had been suspected, but nothing could be proven. Oddest of all, and why the story had remained with him, the composer's music changed radically, and not for the better.)

* * *

He stayed, listening, leaning on the wide doorframe, until moonlight began to peep through the upper lights of the long windows, and she and the music began to fade. Her gaze drew in from the distant focus on her musical landscape, and she looked up, somehow even more immediate and present. Their eyes met, and a swift smile flickered in her face as she vanished into a wisp of moonlight. He had the very distinct impression that she was amused, that he was welcome, and next time, he should take advantage of a chair, not lurk neither in nor out.

* * *

She did not appear every night, or if she did, she was not visible in moonlight. She was never visible in daylight, though sometimes it seemed as if she was there in a different kind of way -- a warm breath of breeze, a listening air, one set of cufflinks shining brighter than another. He grew more and more adept at knowing when she would be visible, the music audible, and arranged his days to accomodate those nights. He had the piano tuned and cleaned, and arranged for new curtains. And he made sure to take advantage of the comfortable seating.

* * *

She appreciated his efforts. When, daring, he brought a sheaf of music paper, several pens and a lap-board for writing, she would play out the lines and phrases clearly, so he could note them down. After some trial and error, they worked out a method where he would leave what he noted down in the piano -- not on, actually under the lid, on the strings -- and she could expand, correct, annotate what he wrote, as long as it was in pencil. Ink she could not affect. He tried not to think about how any of this worked, lest it stop.

* * *

He did not pursue any inquiries into the scandal. There was no point, and he feared that too much knowledge, like too much thinking about ghostly physics, would cause the whole thing to cease. He was too caught up in helping her bring her music into being, in finding a means to see it published, possibly performed, properly, under her name; to have her artistry and skill recognized, not stifled and subsumed under the wreckage her arrogant husband had made of their lives, taking her work as his own. This was his life's work, she his heart's love, well returned.

* * *

Scores are reported to be found in a trunk, a desk, in one of the piano-benches relegated to nursery -- the composer may no longer be living, but her music has a champion (despite her surviving -- grasping -- husband, long re-married, who would prefer his perfidies be forgotten) and he is persistent and passionate and very much in love. Her pieces are published, orchestrated, played in concert halls and salons. (Sometimes, when her champion takes a box at a premier, at a particular hall when the stars are right, one might catch a glimpse of a lady, elegant, old-fashioned, luminous with happiness.

* * *

The house became a foundation, a place where music is still made and taught, performed and wrestled with. It is haunted still. The artists-in-residence insist that they can hear lap-harp music, piano music, murmuring voices singing songs they almost understand, though the harp in the music room is a pedal-harp, and none of the pianos sound like what they hear. Sometimes, on clear but moonless nights, someone up late might think they see two heads, light and dark, bent together at the old piano in the music room, hear an etherial duet.

Sometimes new music appears on the music desk.

* * *

* * *


End file.
